Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1887-09-28
Guraka Dailp Sentinel.
Jay GOULD's SKULL.

1t seems, says the San Francisco Bulle.
tin, that the great railroad king has been
attacked with such severe neuralgia in
the head that his friends have become
uneasy lest some disease should be
Matching in his brain-that busy brain
which has evolved such wonderful
schemes and which has known SO little
rest since it began it's life work of gather
ing railroads. So they sent for DR..
William A. Hammond, who is in nervous
diseases what Gould is in railroads, and
the mighty financier placed his skull in
his hands.
What DR.. Hammond does not know
about skulls is not worth knowing.
Among other things he has ascertained
that a fixed law governs the temperature
of the brain; that in a healthy subject
who is right-handed the right side of the
head is q triAe hotter than the left, and
that in all healthy people the forehead
ia slightly hotter than the occiput. If,
therefore, examination should reveal
more heat in the left side of the head
than in the right. or at the base of the
brain than in the forehead, an accumu.
lation of blood in the wrong place may
be assumed, and incipient disease may
be suspected. In order to determine
with absolute accuracy the relative heat
Of the various parts of the skull . DR..
Lombard, formerly Of Harvard College,
has invented an instrument which
changes the heat into electricity and re.
cords it to the fractional part of a degree.
This instrument was applied to Mr..
Gould and DR.. Hammond reported that
it showed his head to be sound and the
heat in the right place. Without being
in any degree a hot-headed man his
brain had all the heat necessary to per.
form it's functions, and the apprehensions
OF softening of the brain, to which his
long-continued neuralgia had led, appear
to have been groundless.
This instrument Of DR.. Lombard's
bids fair to be in general request. A
large proportion OF mankind die of dis.
ease more or less connected with the
brain. Those diseases do not come sud-
denly. Their approach must be indi-
Gated by premonitory symptoms long be.
forehand, though the op%aqueness of the
bony envelope which contains the brain
prevents their detection. The doctor is
told that the patient suffers from head.
ache, and as headache accompanies about
half the ailments which destroy life he
is not much the wiser for the informa.
tion. DIR. Lombard's instrument will at
any rate enable him to locate the seat of
the trouble in the brain; this ascertained,
he may OF all events form a conjecture
as to its cause. Where the blood COL
lects at the base of the brain while the
forehead is cool, one or two causes for
the perturbation are instantly suggested.
The march of improvement in medi-
cine during the next half century bids
fair to follow the line of mechanical in
vention, and the art of healing thus
promises to cease to be empirical and to
rise to the dignity of a fixed science.
Bacteriology is substantially a step in
the right direction; it has given the
faculty in the microscope a weapon more
powerful than the whole pharmacopeia.
Now we make the thermometer or the
calorimeter tell us what is passing in
the various sections of the skull. Pres.
emily some scientist will cast q light on
the tissues so powerful that the scientific
observer will be able to see the lung, the
liver, the kidney or the heart q. if there
were no intervening substance, and the
with his anesthetics and anti.
septics, will be able to extirpate the
germ of a disease which if left undis-
turbed might prove fatal. At the pres
emit rate of progress the battle between
disease and the doctor bids fair to be
decisively Won by the latter; SO that
tim 9, perhaps in the next century,
no adult will die except from accident or
old age.